The Lost Era
by Akanami no Kiku
Summary: It makes sense that after a waring state era and four shinobi wars that ninja would like to know they went wrong in this whole "village" thing. So really it was just Shinobu's luck that she was a leading authority on clan and pre-clan history, which was great for a paranoid village that feared all of it's documents had been tampered with. Some uncomfortable topics mentioned herein.


**Whoa it's been a couple years since I've posted anything. If anyone is following my older fics I'll be going over some of them rewriting and such, many of them I deleted due to lack of interest I had or that I was in transitional point in my life. But for the most part I haven't been writing because high school and college became more of a concern and you know real life started interrupting the fantasy.**

**Any way this fic just sort of struck me this afternoon and after walking myself through the fic I thought it was a concept I hadn't heard before and was going to see where it goes trying my hand at a slightly crack fic or at least a humorous one. Any feedback is nice, don't expect much in the way of grammar as though English is my first language that doesn't correct my spelling or make my usage correct.**

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There wasn't much history to be found in the Elemental Nations, what with four Shinobi Wars and the battle filled Clan Wars Era many things simply weren't written down or were lost to any number of maladies. It was strange that after the Fourth Shinobi War that a demand of preserving history had arisen. Most hidden villages had a fairly decent record system from taxes, to missions, and council requests. But with recent event revealing that every document may contain either corruption or false information and grand revision had been sparked across the nations.

Takamura Shinobu was a civilian researcher born and raised in Konoha but had left for schooling in Hi no Kuni's capital a short few years before the Fourth War began. She had always been an avid fan of the past and at the tender age of nineteen was the world foremost authority on the Clan Wars Era and Pre Clan Era's history. But the real fact of the matter that she was the only historian of those areas ever remembered since ninja villages were founded. In fact almost as soon as villages were built there was a sudden practice of scroll and a book burning happened throughout most of the larger countries. Smaller nations and clans that were absorbed or were killed to extinction committed similar act all throughout the Clan Wars Era up to the First Shinobi war.

It was this revelation and several burned and age worn documents discovered in Shinobu's neglected family compound in capital that helped her write her thesis on this topic. It earned her history and anthropology masters and why there just so happened to be a gangly batch of Shinobi at the door of her office at Hi no Kuni's Shinobi Museum. They ranged from clan representatives to official village messengers whom all looked very cross to be colliding in such a faction in a civilian building. The Museums' curator and Shinobu's boss asked in the highest voice she'd ever heard from him for a "word". She was hard pressed to tell him no given the circumstance.

The end result was obvious the young Daimyo had granted permission for her "services", the odd sense of feeling like a hooker hit Shinobu, and Konoha and it's Clan's were given access to her knowledge first. All other nations had to submit a formal petition. For Shinobu it was a walking dream and nightmare. A dream because she had been globally recognized for not only her thesis but several controversial books she had written about the mysteries of chakra and it's discovery and the effects of war on shinobi clan interbreeding. Both were works filled with the utmost harsh criticism, but Shinobu had trekked across Hi no Kuni's and even heralded the rediscovery of Uzushiogakure, whose exact location was lost after the book burnings and fighting of the Third Shinobi War, to discover the documents that supported her theories and conclusions.

And so after three years of schooling, exploring, and combating classical and neoclassical thinking of shinobi, clans, and unspoken clan incest that could be traced back to early Clan histories people finally wanted to know the true past, the past and reasoning for how ninja, clans, and villages came to be. The "Nightmare" would be the restrictions, lies, denials, and the inner propaganda filled atmosphere that all ninja dwellings exuded in full force.

Years ago when Kyuubi ravished Konoha and all her inhabitants Shinobu and the small Takamura family had saved enough to take a vacation to the seaside. The group returned to see their home gouged from its very foundations. Shinobu recalled an aunt and several cousins who left for work in an outlying village that she never saw again. The memory of them stuck out more than any other, more then the destruction of her fathers business, her mother's break down at her loss of lifestyle and eventual abandoning her, and even more then the original trip itself.

Her relatives were in her mind escaping the very backwards village where being a ninja meant everything, and she would never become one due to her chronic heart and lung condition. Her father worked in restaurants and teashops for years and Shinobu attended Civilian School. For one tenuous semester Uzumaki Naruto and her shared a classroom, it was a time filled with things Shinobu did care for as soon after she was placed in an advanced school for young scholars.

Naruto now Rokudaime Hokage did recall her however, as the smart girl with extra curly hair that was black in some places and chestnut in others who asked about things no one talked about. He recalls not only her but also that whole class for it was there in civilian school her decided to be Hokage, he recalled sitting and waiting his turn to speak debating his answer when it was her turn.

"Shinobu-chan have you thought about what you would like to do when you grow up?" the snobby yet sickly sweet Yanagi-sensei had asked.

She stood and gave the question serious thought, and their sensei obviously expected the generic child like answer. What the class received was something all together different.

"I'm going to discover how chakra was first used by studying the time before Clans." She had responded with certainty and strength. The class rebuttal that followed was similar to all that Naruto received thereafter by declaring he'd be Hokage. For the past 60 years the time before the clans and villages had quickly become and obscurity, with only children who recalled the latter end of the clan wars left alive today. The general census was that there was no time before the clans, at the very least any time before Rikudo Senin.

Naruto didn't recall the later bit until later in life, what he did recall was checking up on former classmates and coming upon Shinobu's thesis during the reconstruction process after the war. With peacetime upon the Elemental Nations Naruto's thought were more and more on the future and the truths that had been hidden from the very world by the work of not only Madara but the ninja themselves running from the truth. So it what started as the rewriting of village history books led to entire clans wanting a rewriting of their history for fear of unknown infiltration and miss transposed information.

In the end it really didn't help that Shinobu was the only historian of her kind. Unlike the hardcore neo historians who wrote about controversial national issues and clan secrets that could get them killed, or even those delved into the scandals and far left objectives just for the hell of it, Shinobu didn't have a lot of support in her subject area. Young as she was her being published was a miracle of it's own, but her man powered was limited to two college interns who wanted to learn obscure history out of interest and not passion.

It took three days to explain that supplies had to be gathered and people prepared to help as preserving documents took a delicate touch on top of identifying, verifying, and then finally authenticating all of the finds. So as those things were being done the Hokage and village council were meant to decide the order the archives would be examined in. The resulting meeting lasted six hours and was shockingly won by the Aburame, who by far had the most obscure and unknown history to begin with.

Shinobu and her historian team of fifteen civilians didn't know what they were getting into just three weeks later when the were escorted into the village proper.

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**Hope you all enjoyed or at least got some form of inspiration R&R.  
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